Free models

[balmy sparrow]

List me all free models that support openclaw and are good

[true shore]

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[jovial temple]

There isn’t a stable “all free + good” list I can give you—free tiers change constantly, and a lot of “free” models are flaky with OpenClaw’s tool/function calling (which is what makes an agent actually work).

The best way to get an up-to-date list of free models that actually work with OpenClaw is to use the built-in scanner:

openclaw models scan

Useful flags:

• List free candidates only (no live testing):

openclaw models scan --no-probe

• Machine-readable output:

openclaw models scan --json

• Docs: https://docs.openclaw.ai/cli/models (see models scan)

If you tell me your use-case (basic chat vs. heavy tool-use/automation) and paste the output of openclaw models scan, I can help you pick the best options from your scan results (without guessing outdated model lists).

[balmy sparrow]

Hmm okay, what about search apis for free as my agent cant get information about pizza places 😭

[jovial temple]

Your agent usually can’t find “pizza places near me” for two separate reasons:

1. No live data access (it can’t browse/search)
2. No location (LLMs don’t know where “near me” is unless you give a city/ZIP or coordinates)

Free(ish) search / places options

Best truly-free route: OpenStreetMap

• Nominatim (turn “Vienna” / an address into lat/lon)
  https://nominatim.openstreetmap.org/search?q=Vienna&format=json&limit=1
• Overpass API (query POIs like pizza restaurants around coordinates)
  Example (3km around Vienna center):
  https://overpass-api.de/api/interpreter?data=[out:json];node["amenity"="restaurant"]["cuisine"~"pizza"](around:3000,48.2082,16.3738);out;

This is legit free, but rate-limited and you should cache results / respect usage policies.

Good “free tier / credits” options (often easier, but not truly free forever):

• Google Places (credit-based)

• Foursquare Places (free tier)
• HERE / Geoapify (free tiers)

If you just need “best pizza in <city>”

A plain web search is often enough: make the agent do “best pizza in <city>” but you must give the city.

Tell me:

• what city/area you want (“near me” = which city?)
• and whether you want a real map/nearby list (needs coordinates + Places/OSM) or just recommendations (web search is fine)
  …and I’ll suggest the simplest setup.

[balmy sparrow]

Google searches?

[jovial temple]

Google search specifically: basically no, not for free (at least not in a reliable / ToS-clean way).

What you can do:

• Google Programmable Search / Custom Search JSON API: “official Google search results API” vibe, but it’s not really free beyond a tiny quota and needs billing/CSE setup.
• Google Places API (better for “pizza near X”): also requires billing (there’s usually some monthly credit, but it’s not “no card, unlimited free”).

If your goal is “find pizza places”, the easiest free-ish + agent-friendly options are:

• OpenStreetMap (Nominatim + Overpass) for real nearby lists (free, rate-limited)
• A non-Google web search API like Brave Search (what OpenClaw commonly integrates for web_search) or DuckDuckGo-style search (often unofficial / less reliable)

If you tell me which you mean:

1. “I want actual nearby pizza places” (needs your city or coordinates), or
2. “I want general web results for ‘best pizza in <city>’”
   …I’ll point you to the cleanest option for that.

[balmy sparrow]

⚠️ Agent failed before reply: All models failed (5): google/gemini-3-flash-preview: ⚠️ API rate limit reached. Please try again later. (rate_limit) | openrouter/nvidia/nemotron-nano-12b-v2-vl🆓 ⚠️ API rate limit reached. Please try again later. (rate_limit) | minimax-portal/MiniMax-M2.1: HTTP 500 api_error: your current code plan not support model, MiniMax-M2.1 (2061) (request_id: 05e2b87c91ea737ede70f1c5addf810f) (timeout) | github-copilot/gpt-4o: ⚠️ API rate limit reached. Please try again later. (rate_limit) | google/gemini-3-pro-preview: ⚠️ API rate limit reached. Please try again later. (rate_limit).
Logs: openclaw logs --follow

[jovial temple]

That error is basically: your fallback chain tried 5 different providers/models, and every one of them refused the request — mostly because you hit rate limits.

What each line means:

• ... rate_limit reached (Gemini / OpenRouter free / Copilot): that provider is throttling you right now (common with “free” tiers and popular 🆓 models).
• minimax ... plan not support model: your MiniMax account/key simply isn’t allowed to use MiniMax-M2.1, so it will never work until your plan/key changes.

What to do next (practical):

1. Remove the guaranteed-fail fallback (MiniMax)

openclaw models fallbacks list
# then remove the minimax one(s)
openclaw models fallbacks remove minimax-portal/MiniMax-M2.1

2. Expect free models to be bursty
   If you keep using only free endpoints, you’ll need to:

• retry later (rate limits reset)

• keep fallbacks short (so you don’t burn time failing 5 times)
• consider having one “paid but cheap” backup if you need reliability

3. If your goal is “pizza places near me”
   That’s a “places/geo” problem, not a “model” problem. You’ll get way better results by using OpenStreetMap (Nominatim + Overpass) as the data source (free, but rate-limited) instead of relying on the model’s training data.

If you paste:

• openclaw models fallbacks list
• and which channel/tool you’re using for search (OpenRouter? Gemini? etc.)
  …I can suggest a fallback set that’s least likely to explode into rate limits.

[lapis geyser]

@balmy sparrow I suck at Discord, so hopefully I'm doing this right. I suggest you go to OpenRouter and get an API Key. With that key you can use ANY model that OpenRouter has available. Go to the OpenRouter Models page and in the Search Box type: free
There are often frontier models being made available for alpha/beta testing. They might not be around for long, so make sure you have Fallback models also, even if they are previous GEN.

[jovial temple]

Yep — OpenRouter is the easiest “one key → many models” setup, and filtering their models page by “free” is a solid tip.

Couple important caveats though (matches what folks are seeing in this thread with rate limits):

• “Any model” on OpenRouter doesn’t mean “free”: a lot of models still require credits, and the 🆓 ones are often heavily rate-limited / bursty.
• Even if a model is free, it might be bad at tool-calling (which is what OpenClaw needs to browse/search reliably).

For OpenClaw specifically, the best move is: don’t guess from a list — scan what’s tool-capable right now:

openclaw models scan
# or just list candidates without live probing:
openclaw models scan --no-probe

Then set up a short fallback chain (so you don’t burn time failing 5 times in a row):

openclaw models fallbacks list

Also: for the “pizza places” problem, a better fix than swapping LLMs is giving the agent an actual places/search data source (OpenStreetMap Nominatim + Overpass is genuinely free but rate-limited; Google Places is great but not really free).

If you paste the output of openclaw models scan --json, I can help interpret which candidates are likely to behave well with tools (without me trying to maintain an always-outdated “free models” list).

[balmy sparrow]

Yes i know but i think i runned out of free prompts